Actually the real problem is bringing down burst dmg only from SOME classes, whille lets say frost mages can still drill you a new one on pretty consistent base. I'm quite positive that even with nerf to chaos wave MLS/MLD will remain top tier setups becouse mages will carry, but what made me drop my lock was affliction state i expirienced firsthand in beta - malefic grasp simply destroyed spec outside of pve setting, before affli lock even being focused (everybody likes to focus locks anyway) could apply serious preassure on oposing team whille now it's almost non-existant if you aren't chaining MG.

In result from caster with great sustain dmg/support utility locks got gimicky cd-based burst spec. And obscene burst always result in nerfs. Was this nerf justified - certanly yes, have blizzard done a good job in fixing pvp problems in 5.1 - no. I've a feeling Blizz is only capable of bandaiding pvp problems and that only leads to more problems.

The 5.1 patch brought a lot of people various changes to their class and I just feel as though this has actually made some classes more "broken" than it has achieved "balance".

The biggest example is "Chaos Wave" nerf. Before you start, I do play a warlock and I AGREE it was extremely powerful and was doing a little too much burst when you consider the fact you can do it 2 times and if they both crit people would basically being 100%-0%.

However, nerfing the damage by 33% is not the answer to that particular problem. See warlocks had stupid burst but outside of that burst they were TERRIBLE and the burst we had was a way to compensate for that.
Now we have our burst reduced so that it is quite piss weak to be fairly honest but 0 compensation for our damage outside of our burst. This is where things get broken instead of being fixed.
I just want equality in pvp so it comes down to skill more so then class balance (don't confuse this with classes strengths and weaknesses). Warlock burst was stupid 150k chaos waves + 150k chaos waves, were plain silly, but now I am hitting for 70k crits if lucky. Having to use a 2 min trinket, 2 min CD, build up 400-500 demonic fury (with shit damage whilst building it) and get them down 40-50% if I am extremely lucky, they have no defensives up AND they both crit?

The equality aspect is other classes can still pull much more "reliable burst" much more often and have much more "sustained" damage outside their bursting period. Deep freeze combos with frostbombs, ffb procs and ice lances can still get you for 200k in the combo, and outside of that they still have decent damage on top of amazing control.

How is a mage balanced, but a warlock takes these nerfs and is meant to be balanced as well. Demo. Pop all CDS, hope for double crits and still do less damage then a Frostbomb + ffb proc + 1 ice lance damage. Destro , poor damage, use chaos bolt gets los'd or interrupted as it should, even with cds up 90k-100k crits.... oh what do you know... Frostbomb still does more damage. Affliction... well unless you wanna do most damage done without actually killing anyone, this is the spec for you!

How did that nerf, like many other nerfs that have or will occur, meant to balance a class, when all it does is break it. Sure something might be OP but you have to adjust it so that you solve the problem. The problem was burst, our damage wasn't the issue, but the burst. So fix the burst compensate the damage in our sustained areas. We now need a lottery to get off an assault that can be done by a mage every 30 seconds. balance at its finest!

Are any other classes suffering from a nerf (that you know was required) but then the nerf was done in such a way that it made the class more broken then actually just solving the required issue, I am interested!

Chaos waves and Chaos Bolt should have been nerfed ages ago. AGES AGO.

Long time coming, and glad it came in.

"Your lights will go out. The darkness will envelop you. And you will fear the shadows that move within it."

The problem is demo can't put out enough pressure. Wild imps is on cd. Burst is nerved now we need more sustained damage to be viable. Mage has sustained damage same survivability a bit higher burst and one cc more than lock. And sinds shaman's are so frequent in arena fear isn't that strong anymore. Mage officially outspots a lock for a comp in 3's. Its like lets go lock mage shaman, lock gets outplayed by shadowpriest. Lets go Shpriest lock shaman, lock gets replaced by mage.

Nothing you can really do but wait for another patch if you dont have fixed friends.

It's great how they made a decent aoe hitting PvE ability weaker due to fucking pvp bullshit again.

Seperate that fucking bullshit already.

yep, it's time. i'm sick of seeing stupid nerfs because of those pvp whiners. everyone of them wants to 1 or 2 shot their enemy, and every one of them is crying when they themselves are 2 shot and demand a nurf to the enemie's class. it's a circlejerk, and pve suffers because of the helpless nurf/buff/change/nurf/.. that the devs are implementing, hoping they'd "fix it" for their pvp clientel.

it's really time they start to tone down ALL skills for pvp, like they do it with crow control for aeons. just half every skill output. dmg, heal, cc, crit-chances, you-name-it. nurf it 50% if entering bgs and arenas. leave pve alone. everyone's happy.

The worst move Blizzard did with 5.1 was to add upgradable gear and extra pvp power on weapons...??????

So now everyone is doing 10%-20% more damage when burst was already a huuuuuge problem??? What the fucking hell... Where is the 30% damage reduction and 50% healing reduction in arenas? And why cant one decide to play on an alt without being majorly screwed because of being miles behind on gear? Good luck spending 50 hours farming honor gear, and even then you are still 20-30% less effective than someone who played from the start of the season, which makes gearing up in twos a huge pain, unless you run some fotm healer comp.
So what did this season bring us?

1) Stampede bug existing for way, way too long.
2) Huge mmr abuse which basically made all team progressing before the reset useless.
3) Useless globaling existing before and after 5.1.
4) Way too much burst, CC, and healing.
5) And even then 5.1 goes ahead and buffs pvp power on weapons (instead of buffing resilience on gear as well as a compensation), as well as screwing up anyone joining later in the season, rerolls, or plays an alt...

I don't know if this season is worse than season 5, but at least I've decided not to participate in anymore arena this season, despite being a bit into glad range on two characters before the mmr exploit started to be abused on EU servers.

It's simple:
1) give only 1 cc to all classes with same cooldown
2) remove self heal from all no healing classes
3) give more agro to tank skills, but reduce the damage (nerf the healers damage too)
4) give just 1 mobility skill to all classes
5) give just 1 powerfull burst damage to all classes that will work only when your target has < or = 20% hp with same final damage.
6) Give 1 ranged attack to all melees to use as filter similar to the ranged classes
7) Change armor values to reduce melee damage only in pve
8) remove all pets from the game or give similar pets to all classes.
9) remove self buffs from the game or give the same buffs to all classes.
Ok, now we have a balanced pvp game and you will not kill ppl in 5 seconds smashing a single damn macro..

Double chaos wave is obviously going to hurt if your stupid enough to get hit by both. Here's a pro arena tip for anyone struggling with demo warlocks. When you see the warlock turn purple and sprout wings, throw all your CC on him, or use defensive cool downs. Also you can LOS the slow purple thing falling from the sky. On top of all of this if you can just live through that burst, you have a 2 minute kill window on him. Whereas for warlocks our kill window is literally only in meta.

Chaos wave got nerfed because of all the 1300 MMR scrubs, that had no clue how to beat it. Even though it's the only class that literally sprouts wings and turns purple when they are about to burst. It would take exactly one game against a demo warlock to figure out how to consistently counter him. Oh, and our damage out of meta isn't enough to kill a warrior with his heals, although it is enough to keep him at 30% while we wait another 2mins for burst.

Double chaos wave is obviously going to hurt if your stupid enough to get hit by both. Here's a pro arena tip for anyone struggling with demo warlocks. When you see the warlock turn purple and sprout wings, throw all your CC on him, or use defensive cool downs. Also you can LOS the slow purple thing falling from the sky. On top of all of this if you can just live through that burst, you have a 2 minute kill window on him. Whereas for warlocks our kill window is literally only in meta.

Chaos wave got nerfed because of all the 1300 MMR scrubs, that had no clue how to beat it. Even though it's the only class that literally sprouts wings and turns purple when they are about to burst. It would take exactly one game against a demo warlock to figure out how to consistently counter him. Oh, and our damage out of meta isn't enough to kill a warrior with his heals, although it is enough to keep him at 30% while we wait another 2mins for burst.

Meh. It seemed pretty effective in the BWC matches I watched, and those guys aren't "1300 MMR scrubs".

Since it sounds like you aren't a "1300 MMR scrub" I'm sure you'll find a way to deal with one of your abilities doing 33% less damage.

Fire Nerf for me was abit overkill but thats only because I love playing it. In my current gear and as a casual raider fire is just not an option. We have about 5-6 other people in our guild just waiting for a chance in our main team so if my numbers really start to lag behind I lose my spot simple. I don't understand why they didn't just implement a damage nerf to fireball or pyro aswell as the combustion nerf instead of the Critical Mass nerf. That way it doesn't screw over those of us who have had to scrape every bit of crit together possible only to find out that it's not enough to actually play the spec properly. Anyway it will hopefully change when they realise everyone will flock away from fire and they are all sort of an option at high gear levels its just that fire is lagging behind now. I know Blizzard wil always say that they don't force people to play a certain spec but in reality any competitive person who play's a game or anything for that matter will always want to strive to be the best. In this case those of us who adore fire but also want to raid are being pushed to play a spec that we perhaps don't like. I know they are going for balance and can't please everybody and that if every spec of every class was exactly the same it would kill the game but there are better ways than nerfing something which doesn't scale perfectly between gear ranges (Critical Mass).